


Excardiation

by beer_good



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Curse Breaking, Gen, Guilt, Human Sacrifice, Mind Manipulation, Parenthood, Post-Episode: s02e21-22 Becoming, Spells & Enchantments, Spook Me Multi-Fandom Halloween Ficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-13 16:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21171131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beer_good/pseuds/beer_good
Summary: After Buffy runs away from home, Joyce finds herself bringing home a curious flowerpot from the gallery. Somehow, she starts sleeping a lot better. Maybe a little too well. In fact, wouldn't her life be a lot easier if she didn't have to think about Buffy at all…?





	Excardiation

**Title:** Excardiation  
**Author:** Beer Good   
**Fandom:** Buffy, post-"Becoming"  
**Rating:** PG13  
**Word count:** 1350  
**Summary:** After Buffy runs away from home, Joyce finds herself bringing home a curious flowerpot from the gallery. Somehow, she starts sleeping a lot better. Maybe a little too well. In fact, wouldn't her life be a lot easier if she didn't have to think about Buffy at all…?  
Written for **spook_me** and the challenge "[Plant](https://images51.fotki.com/v1563/photos/6/3814576/16026379/ineluodecayfinal_jpg1527378357-vi.jpg)", and the **buffyversebingo** prompt "Decorative when broken".

**Excardiation**

It was nothing special; an old earthenware pot from somewhere in Central America, not old enough to be really valuable, but it had some neat decorations of vines and leaves and stick figures. Joyce wasn't sure why she brought it home from the gallery, she wasn't really thinking straight just now. Something about it just called out to her and it looked nice on the shelf over her bed.

It looked empty, though, so the next day she drove past the flower store and picked up a plant. She lost the little note with the Latin name of it on the way home, but the girl in the store said it basically took care of itself as long as you watered it. It gave her bedroom a sweet, homey smell (filling the void where there used to be teenage perfume and hair products and Sunday morning pancakes), and the large red flowers and green vines added a dash of colour to a house that had seemed so grey since she … since Buffy disappeared.

After a few days, she noticed she was sleeping much better. She'd been so tired, so guilt-ridden, so afraid that she hadn't even noticed it until it started lifting. Instead of dreaming of bodies in ditches, of ripped and bloody clothing, of her daughter screaming for (or at) her, she dreamt of warm colours, of safety, of relief. She'd wake in the morning feeling refreshed. Not that she wasn't afraid for Buffy anymore, or that the house seemed less empty, but at least she could sleep without feeling like she'd given up on her daughter for eight hours. Before leaving for work she'd water the plant and rearrange the vines, which had already grown a lot and were starting to cascade down the wall above her bed.

She closed the door to Buffy's bedroom which had been left open. She felt bad about how good it felt to do that, but went to bed under the comforting vines growing out of the old flowerpot and dreamt of being surrounded by strong, red arms that held her and told her nothing was her fault. Buffy had kept so much from her; why not simply let her?

One day she ran into Willow. It had been a good day; she'd slept better than ever, waking to the sunlight filtering through green and red and the smell of home. She'd been able to focus on her job, even answer the phone like a normal person. Her thoughts had been her own instead of belonging to her daughter. For a moment she wanted to hug Willow when she told her the "gang" would be meeting up tonight to do some "brainstorming" and would she like to join them? It would feel so good to talk to someone about it, maybe cry together, to _do_ something. But then she remembered her safe bedroom, and who to blame. Join the kids who took her daughter from her? It was all she could do to smile, draw on that warm feeling of comfort she'd walked around in for days and say "No, thanks, but you guys have fun."

She brought it up over drinks with Pat that evening. Pat was happy to support her; didn't Joyce have the right to be angry, to put the blame where it belonged? You love your children no matter what stupid crap they get up to, but Buffy had made her choice; that was for Buffy to live with, not her. Some part of her still wanted to disagree with Pat; that's not the way it happened, she'd screwed up too, but somehow she couldn't find the words. When she went to sleep that night, her dreams were of the kids tied up in vines as they struggled to pretend like they had any right to _find_ her daughter after taking her away, while she herself floated on soft petals and didn't have to be reminded. She woke up with soft, warm vines all over her face and it should have felt weird, but she just lay there for a long while feeling them caress her face and feeling … _right_. The feeling lasted way past lunch.

Then came that night when there was a knock on the door. And all of it fell away as Buffy stood in front of her, at least for a few minutes. Then the feeling returned, worming its way back in her heart; by what right did she just _come back_ and tear down the perfect little peace Joyce had built, reignite that guilt? She should feel awful about wanting to yell at Buffy, wanting to tell her to get the hell out again, to stop looking at her like that. When she went to sleep that night the dreams were more intense than ever before, as if in a hurry; _You're right, you're right,_ the voices said, _don't feel bad, it's all her fault, you're strong and your child does nothing but hurt you, make her pay and you won't have to worry anymore, won't have to think about it anymore…_ She awoke with the vines carressing her face, warm and friendly and so simple, the smell of flowers warming her up from the inside. The picture of her and Buffy that had always been on her nightstand lay smashed on the floor, a shard of glass right through Buffy's chest. For a few sleepy seconds it felt like relief.

The next few days were hell, almost as bad as the weeks after Buffy ran away. She hated the feeling of walking on eggshells around that - around her daughter, having to fight to remember to love her. The dreams which had been so comforting turned frantic, had her tossing and turning, voices screaming _hurry hurry do it that ungrateful little bitch never knew what you had to give up kids have it too easy they don't know what you had to sacrifice sacrifice sacrifice_. She watered the plant and something felt off; as if water wasn't enough, as if those red flowers were hungry, as if everything would get easier if she just...

After that whole business with the zombie party, Joyce went into her room to clean up. The pot had been knocked off the shelf and even though it was still in one piece there was a noticeable crack in it, right across one of the pictograms of people surrounded by vines and leaves. She'd never noticed the way the stick figures were grouped around a smaller stick figure, lying on her (how did she know it was a her?) back with a heart above her. Interesting design. She put it on the windowsill, scooped up the soil from the floor and watered the plant again before going to bed. The window was broken and her bedroom was cool and airy; she hadn't realised how stuffy it had been. But the dreams wouldn't come. Sleep wouldn't come. That feeling of safe, righteous anger was dulling. Something was gone, broken forever.

When the alarm clock read 02:48 she got up, walked across the corridor to Buffy's room, lay down beside her daughter and hugged her. Neither of them said anything, and neither of them slept much that night, but it was a start.

She threw out the dead plant the day after she got Buffy re-enrolled in high school. 

* * *

Some time after her mom died, Buffy went through her stuff. She found a cracked flowerpot at the back of a closet. It looked familiar, but above all it felt like _Mom_, y'know? She was always bringing home old stuff like this. She put a begonia in it, put it in the kitchen window, and mostly didn't think much about it. She just liked to have some pretty things around to remind her of Mom; little fixed points in a crazy life. One night when the house was full of potential Slayers and she couldn't sleep, she got a sudden idea of fixing that crack and planting something else in it, but it was just a passing thought and she never got around to it.


End file.
